let's have a talk about the good times
by seemslikeaporno
Summary: I doubt I'll be seeing you around. / Beck&Jade, oneshot.


**let's have a talk about the good times**

**summary**: I doubt I'll be seeing you around.  
**disclaimer**: Victorious isn't mine.

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"Do you believe in love?" He asks one day, sun bright on their skin and the day young; he smells her sunscreen, and her hair is tickling his nose. She breathes in, and he can feel that, too. She shakes as the air enters her lungs.

"No," she answers curtly, closing her eyes, interlacing her fingers with his on his stomach.

"Well." He sighs into her hair, kisses the top of her head, "Do you believe in us?"

She never answers, but her grip on him gets a _littlebit_ tighter.

\\

They really aren't as tragic as others think they are.

Their relationship is actually kind of simple; a breath of normality in another crazy day, the hesitant breeze of summer, the leaves falling in autumn, the promise of snow when winter arrives, the blooming of flowers in the spring. They go on, cycling like the seasons, time refusing to leave them behind.

They go on and on and on for eternity, the prospect of the end of the world tossed around as the only way to stop them.

(_Flash forward_: They are holding hands when they end.)

\\

She loves the sound of rain, the smell of coffee, reading the end of a novel before the beginning so she knows what happens. She owns every CD of some band that he's never heard of, buys him Old Spice cologne for every holiday or birthday or sometimes just because she can and she likes the way it smells on his skin.

She likes kissing, she likes him, she likes his hands on her hips and his breath on her mouth and his eyes on her body.

He likes whatever she likes. He'll follow her to the end of the earth and back again, he'll kiss her whenever he feels like it just because. He'll be spontaneous and passionate and tell her she's beautiful on her worst days.

They'll be simple. They've always been simple.

\\

"Tell me you love me," she says from her perch on the armchair closest to the window in her parents' house. She doesn't look at him when she talks, but out the window. Her eyes are distant, far away, looking but not really seeing. A clap of thunder.

"I love you," he answers, finally, seriously. He glances behind him, searching for a sign of her father and, seeing none, stands up from the couch. His arms snake around her from behind, his chin rests on the top of her head, "I love you," he repeats, "I love you." He kisses her hair.

They stare out of the window together, watch the rain pool on the ground.

She closes her eyes, "Do you believe in love?"

"Yes," he answers without missing a beat. She sighs, leans back into his shoulder, "And I bet you still don't."

"No," she admits, "But I'm starting to believe in us."

That's good enough for him.

\\

"My dad hates me," she tells him seriously on a Monday morning, when he picks her up to drive her to school, "And he hates you. And he hates art. And he hates my piercings and tattoos and my teeth and my face and anything else worth mentioning."

"I don't hate you," he replies easily, putting the car into drive and speeding out of her driveway. He's only got his learner's license, and his real license isn't coming for another three months, but he's always been risky. (And she likes him like that, she likes breaking and bending and twisting the rules to make them hers. Everything belongs to her.)

"I feel so much better," she says dryly, leaning back against the seat and staring out the window at the road, the yellow lines blurring into the asphalt as Beck's car picks up speed. She blinks until she can see straight again, hardly realizes that she's really just blinking back tears, "Do you know what it feels like for your parents to hate you?"

"No," he says, frowning, "But I know what it's like to hate _them_."

She presses her lips together to keep the questions from spilling out, because she knows more than anyone that he's praying for her to ask. She can't. If she knows everything about him, things won't be so simple anymore. They will twist and bend and eventually break, and she'll give anything for something in her life not to be twisted.

"I love you," she says, and it's out of place and random and she doesn't understand why it even left her mouth.

"You don't believe in love."

She takes it back. It makes things so much simpler.

\\

They have sex.

Let's just leave it at that.

\\

But it never leaves; that hunger, desire, to be touchedwantedneeded.

She craves it, needs it almost as much as she needs to breathe, almost as much as she needs adrenaline pumping through her veins and threatening to make her heart stop in its tracks, almost as much as she needs to feel _alive_.

That's what they become.

Just another adrenaline rush. Just another escape. Just another way for her to feel like someone in this world doesn't hate her.

He's just another boy.

(She needs him, but that's not love.)

\\

They go out for ice cream in the middle of summer, when it's so warm that she's uncomfortable in a black tank top and shorts that stop near the top of her thighs and a pair of black flip flops.

"Black attracts heat," he tells her as he orders her coffee flavored ice cream and chocolate for himself. She sits down on a bench in the park and watches him pay; he walks over slowly, handing her the ice cream cone that's already drip-dropping onto the grass, and sits down beside her, so close his legs brush hers at every movement.

"I'm not ready to go back to school." He leans back against the bench and stares at the sky, listening to children screaming on the playground and the birds chirping. He's reminiscent of the days of his youth, when he was chasing girls on the playground and playing baseball with the guys.

"This isn't real, is it?" She asks, her mind somewhere else entirely. She hasn't touched her ice cream; it's melting, the mess coming dangerously close to her black fingernails.

"What's not real?" He furrows his brows, his ice cream halfway gone, a bite of the cone missing. The children keep screaming behind them, excited, happy.

"This." She doesn't say anything for a moment, "Us."

"Jade..." He doesn't know what to say, so he stares.

The children laugh.

\\

Their world ends the first day she says _I love you_ and actually means it.

(It's not simple anymore.)

\\

"Why did you choose her?"

It's been three years since they've last seen each other. He's tanner, more muscular. His eyes are brighter, his smile twice as wide. They're more different now than ever. She looks brittle. Her eyes are bitter, cold; she's her father's daughter. It's a striking image – tragically beautiful. She knows who she is. The woman on the sidewalk that you look at and feel sorry for because everyone knows she's miserable.

He takes her hand, squeezes it in his.

"You never believed in us," he says, emotions rising behind his eyes, flashing so quickly that they're gone before she can figure out what his irises are trying to convey to her.

"Do you love her?"

His watch beeps. When he pulls his hand away from hers, she knows it's over even if he never answers.

"I'm late for my dinner date."

\\

Apparently, they're tragic.

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**a/n**: thanks for reading. :)


End file.
